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Friday, June 24, 2016

My second painting for the Tidewater benefit is called Watermelon. I liked the idea of the round subject from the pie, and thought that pulling out a piece would improve the composition. And then there are the colors, red/pink and green are complimentary, which is a great combination.

When you read this I’ll be in London, and will be off on Sunday night with members of the Wapping Group of Artists, on their summer painting trip to France. I joined them in 2012, and am looking forward to this year’s trip. I’ll try to post from France.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

As I’ve said before, I enjoy painting for a cause I believe in. Tidewater Farm in Falmouth Maine and its community garden is one of those causes. Their Taste of Tidewater event is coming up in August 20th, including a sale of over a hundred paintings from local artists. Last year I did well with a food painting, and so I’m continuing that theme this year.

My first painting for this year is of a Maine specialty, blueberry pie. I made the pie using a recipe from our cousin Ann, and was dismayed to find that I’d used the wrong one. Like any good Mainer, Ann has two blueberry pie recipes, one for a topless pie, and one for a pie with a top crust. The scribbled recipe I found stuck in the front of our New York Times Cookbook turned out to be for the more juicy version with a top, not what I had in mind for this composition, where the missing piece of pie is key. I was ready to make a new pie, and then had the idea of putting this one in the freezer on a tilt. It worked! Sorry about the bad photo, I'll replace it with a better one once the painted sides dry and I can stand the painting up for another shot.

And for even more fun, I’m teaching a plein air class at Tidewater farm again this year, It will be on Tuesdays, August 9th, 16th, 23rd and September 6th and 13th, 9am – 12pm. Check it out here.

For those of you who can’t make a class every week, I’m also teaching a plein air workshop for River Arts in Damariscotta on July 13 and 14th. More info on that is here.

Monday, June 20, 2016

A couple of weeks ago I painted on Monhegan Island with Mary Sheehan Winn and Carol Douglas. What a blast we had! I completed a couple of small oil on paper sketches and two paintings on the island, but I wiped one of the paintings and should have done the same with the other one. I brought back three unfinished paintings to work on at home. Henry Isaacs once said that starting a painting on location is the most important thing. I can see his point. If you can stop before you loose the freshness, you can regain the wonder that began the painting and hopefully not overwork it when you aren’t pressured for time.

This was my last painting of the trip, started while we waited for the ferry to take us home.

The top image is the finished painting, the second image shows my initial work on Monhegan, and the bottom painting image shows work on the painting during last week’s painting class with Rob Abele (see previous post about Rob). I finished it the next day.

A visit to Monhegan is in some ways a trip back in time, as there are few vehicles on the island beyond the pickups used by the inns and lobstermen. And even fewer televisions available to guests. There are only a few places to get something to eat, and only the Island Inn and the Trailing Yew serve dinner on weekdays. To finish my tourist guide, my favorite place to stay is Monhegan House. It’s a historic rooming house, absolutely charming, one of the cleanest places I’ve ever stayed, and they have a fabulous breakfast. And it’s a great bargain. If you are heading to the island alone, do ask for one of the rooms on the 4th floor, the garrets as Mary calls them. Wonderful!

Monday, June 13, 2016

I’ve taken a lot of art workshops, with some very good teachers. And often they're teaching along a similar vein. But sometimes we have to be at the right place to hear it, or maybe we need to hear it many times. This spring I decided to try and find a teacher near me, whose work I admired, who appreciated the same painters that I do, and from whom I could learn over a period of time. And I think I’ve done that with Rob Abele. I take a weekly class with Rob, and as new people join the class, it’s great to hear him very consistently giving the same advice to each of us, whatever our level. Whenever he does a quick demo for someone, I wander over and watch too. Twice I’ve had a private lesson, which is very helpful. In those lessons Rob sets up a killer still life that will take me out of my comfort zone.

Below is my painting at the end of our session of still life #1.

Below is Rob’s. Note that we are painting at the same time, so we don’t have the same viewpoint.

I love the gestural way that Rob paints!

Below is my painting of still life #2 after “improving” it at home. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo at the send of the session. One thing I've learned is that I'm best painting alla prima, and finishing the painting in one sitting. Going back in, I usually muck it up.

And below is Rob’s version. Wow!

I was a whiner on this last one, having somewhat of an aversion to the fun house mirror aspect of the reflection in the rounded brass vase. So when I got home I set up and painted the still life shown at the top of the post, including the shiniest object I could find.

I know I’m learning something with Rob's approach and the consistency that studying with the same teacher over time brings. Thanks Rob!

Sunday, June 5, 2016

There are some things that are hard to paint from life, and this is an example. Even if I was able to set my painting gear in a boat running parallel to these guys, they’d surely tack and head off in another direction before I finished the painting. So this one was painted from a photo. And more important, it was painted upside down. Turning a photo upside down is a time-honored approach artists use to paint shapes rather than “things”. And it works.

Here’s a progress shot of my second attempt at this painting, which was done right-side up. At this point, I wiped it off, it just wasn’t good enough. The first attempt had been wiped off at the drawing stage. And the third attempt also. That’s when I turned the whole thing upside down. What a difference, don’t you agree?

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Don’t
you just love lighthouses? I do. It’s easy to imagine them lighting the way in
a storm. And then there's the solitude of the lighthouse keeper’s life. That
would probably last about a day for me! Lighthouses can also be fun to paint.
They show different faces as the sun moves across the sky and the tide ebbs and
flows. When we’re out on our boat, I always have the camera ready when a
lighthouse comes into view.

A
few years ago my niece and I took a road trip with a goal of visiting as many
lighthouses as we could. This little gem, on the Kennebec River, just south of
Bath, Maine, was one of our favorites. It was commissioned in 1989, fifteen
years after the founding of Bath Ironworks, just upstream. It’s not much taller
than a person, and is just exquisite. You can walk out and around it, over the
water It’s easy to get to by road, and the lovely people who own the property
will likely let you park, but please ask first. Or, you can see it from one of
the tour boats that operate out of Boothbay Harbor, along with several other
lighthouses. It's a great boat ride. This painting was done from of several
photos I took as we went by on our boat a couple of years ago.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Usually I paint paintings,
not decorative objects. But I like to contribute to projects near to my heart,
and the Maine fisheries is one of those. So I was happy to paint a lobster buoy
for the East Penobscot Resource Center in Stonington for their upcoming
benefit. The last time I painted a lobster buoy, it was one I found on the
beach, and I painted it Christmas green and red, and added it to a wreath which
I hung on our shed. A week later a local lobsterman told me he nearly drove off
the road laughing when he saw it hanging there. I hope this one does a better
job!

Here are a few photos of the process I used on the wooden buoy supplied by East Penobscot Resource Center.

Buoy after filling cracks (thanks, Mike!), gessoing, and drawing the lobster based on a previous painting. Note there are two lobsters, one on each side.

Close-up of the drawing on the buoy.

Buoy after the lobster was painted in oils.

Buoy with background.

The final step was to gesso and then paint the stick with acrylic paint. Thanks to Carol L. Douglas for the midnight pick-up and for delivering the buoy for me. The lobster buoy event is on August 1 in Stonington, Maine.